The culture of a learner’s activity depends upon the culture of the educational environment. If this culture corresponds to the learner’s experience and value-based attitudes, he or she has the possibility to pass through all cognitive processes and acquire skills required for in-depth learning based on the understanding that learning means not automatic memorizing, but rather the creation of a sense that is relevant to the learner and that empowers the learner for changing his/her attitude to the environment and him/herself.  

The teaching culture that supports the creation of the sense is characterized by the emphasis on how the knowledge of a subject is created, what research techniques are applied in the subject field, how ideas, theories, and rules are verified and improved, what place and sense the subject has in the system of knowledge, how the knowledge can be applied in practice, etc.   

The attitude defines the relationship between the student and his/her learning, and shows how the learner sees a concrete assignment or a group of tasks. Deep and superficial approaches are related not only to how the student is directly immersed in a concrete learning task, but also to the values of learning that the student finds acceptable, important, and motivating.  

The essence of change in the culture of learning is defined by the tendencies of the mutual effect of the features of the traditional and problem-based learning systems, conditioning a peculiar culture of teaching and learning.

Research question:

How is students’ attitude to learning affected by the context of different cultures of learning? Are there any changes in students’ attitude to learning and does deep learning emerge when studies are organized following the principles of different cultures of teaching and different traditions?

Aim: to determine the relationship between the changing culture of teaching and students’ attitude to learning.

Objectives:

1. To highlight the specificity of changes in the culture of teaching characteristic of the studied context (transition of a professional higher educational institution into a university, and transformation of the traditional system of studies);
2. To identify changes in students’ attitude towards learning when the culture of teaching is determined by different system of the organization of the process of studies (subject: semester, cycle; problem).

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